Blinken visits Middle East to discuss Gaza post-war plan

The major Arab sponsor Saudi Arabia would normalise relations with Israel in return for access to advanced US weapons and an American-backed civilian nuclear power programme.

 
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68614549 By Tom Bateman, State Department correspondent & Rushdi Abu Alouf, Gaza correspondent,, BBC News, in Jeddah and Istanbul

The US secretary of state has flown to the Middle East to discuss a post-war plan to govern and secure Gaza.

Antony Blinken’s talks with Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia and then Egypt will focus on what the US calls “an architecture for lasting peace”.

It comes as witnesses said Israeli forces had escalated their operation around al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, carrying out a number of air strikes.

Earlier, Israel’s military said it had killed 90 gunmen there since Monday.

Separately, indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas are continuing in Qatar to bring about a ceasefire and the release of hostages. But there are few signs that a breakthrough is imminent.

Mr Blinken’s sixth trip to the region since the start of the war in Gaza saw him land in Jeddah on Wednesday afternoon to meet the Saudi leadership.

Descending from the plane shortly before sundown he was greeted by waiting officials, including Mazin al-Himali from the Saudi foreign ministry, who embraced Mr Blinken.

He is expected to meet the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, at the royal palace on Wednesday night.

State department spokesman Matthew Miller said they would discuss efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement and increase aid deliveries to Gaza, amid further dire warnings about the scale of the humanitarian crisis there.

A UN-backed food security assessment this week said 1.1 million people in Gaza were struggling with catastrophic hunger and starvation, adding that a man-made famine in the north was imminent between now and May.

Also on the agenda would be “co-ordination on post-conflict planning for Gaza, including ensuring Hamas can no longer govern or repeat the attacks of 7 October, a political path for the Palestinian people with security assurances with Israel, and an architecture for lasting peace and security in the region”, Mr Miller added.

Mr Blinken will travel to Cairo on Thursday to meet Egyptian leaders.

The Americans are trying to bring together a major deal that would put the internationally-recognised Palestinian Authority (PA) back into Gaza for the first time since it was driven out by Hamas 17 years ago.

Nothing has yet been drawn up, but the ideas are thought to include possible support on the ground from Arab nations, while all the parties including Israel would commit to pursuing a two-state solution – the long-held international formula for peace.

The major Arab sponsor Saudi Arabia would normalise relations with Israel in return for access to advanced US weapons and an American-backed civilian nuclear power programme.

However, even if such a multi-part plan could be agreed, US officials concede it is likely only attainable in the longer term.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected the idea of PA control of Gaza. The issue is likely to be another sticking point amid an already fractious relationship with President Biden.

Some of those familiar with the plan concede it feels ambitious given the lack of breakthrough on a ceasefire agreement, the ongoing humanitarian crisis, and because any remaining trust between Israelis and Palestinians is shattered. But the US administration hopes it can still use the moment to grasp the initiative.

Mr Blinken will also travel to Israel on Friday as part of his current trip. According to Mr Miller, he will discuss with Israeli leaders the hostage negotiations and the “need to ensure the defeat of Hamas, including in Rafah, in a way that protects the civilian population”.

President Joe Biden has warned Israel that it would be a “mistake” to launch an offensive in the southern city of Rafah, where more than a million displaced civilians are sheltering.

But on Tuesday, Mr Netanyahu said Israel was “determined to complete the elimination of [the Hamas] battalions in Rafah, and there is no way to do this without a ground incursion”.

More than 31,900 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

The conflict began when about 1,200 people were killed and 253 others were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel on 7 October, according to Israeli tallies.

On the ground in Gaza on Wednesday, heavy fighting raged around al-Shifa hospital as the Israeli military’s operation there continued for a third day.

Witnesses told the BBC that tanks previously positioned around the hospital complex had now moved eastwards, along al-Wahda Street.

They also reported a significant increase in the number of air strikes in Gaza City and other northern areas.

“The relentless sounds of explosions can be heard from around al-Shifa hospital,” said Osama Tawfiq, who lives 700m (2,300ft) from the complex. “Since Monday morning, we feel like as if the war has just begun.”

According to the witnesses, the strikes targeted homes belonging to members of Hamas who had been assigned to serve on so-called “emergency committees” in place of the armed group’s police force.

Among them was Amjad Hathat, who was reportedly killed along with 11 other emergency committee members at the Kuwait roundabout in Gaza City on Tuesday evening while securing the distribution of humanitarian aid.

Mr Tawfiq said that the situation had deteriorated in his area, after a period of relative calm that followed the withdrawal of Israeli forces in mid-January.

“We are not only enduring bombings but also facing a looming food crisis.”

“During last Ramadan, we could break our fast with some food. But now we struggle to find anything beyond water that smells like sewage and tastes like seawater, as well as meagre bread. My children are suffering from hunger.”

A UN-backed food security assessment has said 1.1 million people in Gaza are struggling with catastrophic hunger and starvation, and that a man-made famine in the north of the territory is imminent between now and May.

On Wednesday morning, the Israeli military said its troops had killed approximately 90 gunmen and questioned 300 suspects during what it called the “precise operation” in and around al-Shifa.

They first raided the hospital in November, when the military accused it of being a Hamas “command and control centre” – an allegation that Hamas and hospital officials denied.

The military said the latest operation was launched on Monday because “senior Hamas terrorists have regrouped inside… and are using it to command attacks against Israel”.

Hamas acknowledged a senior commander of its internal security force was killed there on Monday, but said he was co-ordinating aid deliveries. It said the other people killed were patients and displaced civilians sheltering there.

The military said it was taking measures to avoid harm to civilians and keep the hospital functioning, but witnesses told BBC Arabic’s Gaza Today programme that that the situation there was catastrophic and that civilians, including medics, were crowded in corridors.

“Children do not stop crying because they are dying of hunger and thirst… and the wounded suffer all night long due to the lack of medicines and painkillers,” one displaced woman, who asked not to be named, said on Tuesday.

“The bulldozers are sweeping away the places where we are staying, and shrapnel is flying above our heads everywhere,” she added.

Additional reporting by David Gritten in London

March 22, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

One-State Solution Could Transform the World

By Robert C. Koehler,  http://commonwonders.com/a-one-state-solution-could-transform-the-world/ 20 Mar 24

Probably fewer ideas are treated with more contempt in today’s world than . . . ahem: a one-state solution for Palestine and Israel, with, good God, every resident equally valued, equally free.

“Snort! No one wants this! It’s not possible — it’s not true!”

My reply to the cynics is this: We will not enter the future with closed minds. We will not find security — we will not evolve — if we choose to remain subservient to linear, us-vs.-them thinking. We will not become our fullest selves or have access to our own collective human consciousness if we choose to stay caged in our own righteous certainty. Our god is better than your god!

I acknowledge from the start: This is not a simple process, any more than America’s reluctant embrace of the civil rights movement was, or is, simple. But armed dehumanization — which is to say war, hatred, ethnic cleansing, cultural erasure, endless slaughter, the murder of children, genocide — is neither “simple” nor the least bit effective in creating a world that is safe for anyone. War and hatred perpetuate nothing but themselves. You know that, right?

But what about a two-state solution? Neither side actually wants this and, with the West Bank overrun with Israeli settlers, it’s hardly possible anyway. The concept of a two-state solution, Samer Elchahabi writes at the Arab Center website. “has been used to delegitimize Palestinians’ aspirations for equality and freedom, has allowed for relentless settlement expansion on Palestinian land, and has offered a fig leaf for perpetuating occupation with Western support.”

I also note the insightful words of management consultant and social philosopher Mary Parker-Follett, who pointed out, in her groundbreaking 1925 essay “Constructive Conflict,” that there are three basic ways of dealing with conflict: domination, compromise and what I would call transcendence.

Domination is simplistic. I win, you lose. This is the essence of every war and obviously the essence of Israel’s ongoing devastation of Gaza. Attempted domination never touches the heart of the conflict but, rather, attempts to kill it. This never works. Compromise is usually seen, with scathing reluctance, as the only other choice, a la some sort of two-state solution. Both sides give something up; neither side gets what it wants. “Compromise,” Parker-Follett pointed out, “does not create, it deals with what already exists.” And the conflict doesn’t really go away. It just takes a different form.

But the third option, which she referred to in her essay as “integration,” addresses the needs and wishes of all parties to the conflict and creates something — a solution — that hadn’t previously existed. In short, it creates a better world.

“As conflict — difference — is here in the world, as we cannot avoid it, we should, I think, use it,” Parker-Follett wrote. “Instead of condemning it, we should set it to work for us.”

Is this possible — in the midst of the hell called war? Most analysts of the conflict seem to dismiss a one-state, equality-for-all solution as “delusional” . . . oh gosh, too much work. It’s so much easier to keep hating and killing and just “finish the job,” as Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner put it in a recent interview, adding that Gaza’s “waterfront property could be very valuable.”

Yeah, dominance is seductive, especially for those in the most advantageous position. Perhaps that’s why it usually seems to be the disadvantaged ones — victimized, endangered, deprived of their full humanity — who are able to envision the transcendent blessings of equality, not for some but for all. This has certainly been the case here in the U.S.A., where those still addicted to “white America” view the country’s swelling tide of equality with fear (“they’re trying to replace us!”) rather than wonder and awe.

Elchahabi writes: “A departure from the two-state solution to another model based on equality and democratic rights for all is imperative. The one-state solution entails a single democratic state encompassing Israel, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza, with equal rights for all inhabitants, irrespective of ethnicity or religion. This paradigm shift addresses core issues: the right of return for Palestinian refugees, as stipulated in UN General Assembly Resolution 194; the status of Jerusalem; and the question of settlements.”

And then he makes a key point: “The one-state solution reimagines these as internal challenges of a unified polity rather than as zero-sum elements of a bilateral conflict.

This is stepping out of the usual context in which the media presents the horrific conflict: us vs. them. Attempting to understand the conflict from a transcendent vision of unity and connection is what it means to evolve. The world we are in the process of creating is bigger and more whole than the fragmented, shattered world that currently exists.

He goes on: “Israelis and Palestinians alike should imagine a unified state that upholds the rights and dignity of all its citizens, forging a shared identity from the rich tapestry of its diverse peoples. This vision, while challenging, holds the promise of a lasting peace built not on separation and segregation but on the foundations of justice and mutual respect.”

This is the language of peace. It swells the heart, it transcends the small-mindedness of global politics. Palestine and Israel could transform the world.

March 22, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment